The Outsider
by Lady Storm
Summary: Alas! My love is leaving me! -- A twisted tale of love.


_This was a short story I wrote years ago, then edited to fit the Redwall fandom. I know it's definitely a leap in terms of content regarding the usual 'Redwall affair', but it's here anyway. Posted for the sake of posting, I guess. I did draw a little bit of inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft. The identity of the characters is up to the reader._

_Rated M for disturbing content.__ The assumed setting of this story is the world of Redwall by Brian Jacques. The ownership of the characters is questionable. I only claim the narrator._

**THE OUTSIDER**

The sea roared and heaved upon itself, smashing upon the sand, wearing away at the earth little by little. Such was the violence of the storm that it could be said that the terror at the infinite depths of the seas had finally awoken. The apocalyptical fears, shaken from their slumber, rose to witness the putrid smoke of tragedy that slowly thinned but spread wider, wider.

The weather does not bother me. Destruction would be welcome on such a night as this – her cheery woodland garments traded in exchange for pretentious white robes. Alas! My love is leaving me! Treasuring our last unknown moments, I watch her through battered crystal windows, the dread outside as my cloak from her bluest eyes. Ah, marvelous beauty, sinful fool! How beautiful was her new dress, brushing against her form and the bare dirt floor, giving her the appearance of a deity, a marble stature for all eyes to affirm. Go on, try it on, you are sure to please all. Please him!

I could go about this another way, I know. There is _him_ - this fellow, a brute, a fighter, the most meager of existences. His mind would reel and his eyes fail him at a glimpse of what I know. But he has a charm that I cannot replace, that I do not comprehend. How I wish I do, for how it enthralls my love so! Her dilated pupils see none but him, and this is the multitude of thorns wrapped around my shred of a shivering heart. Hence, he is not the answer. If anything pains me more than my own existence, it is his… with hers. For their bond is blindingly pure, so abstract but complete that I weep to think of it, to imagine that colourless light - blinding where I have to close my eyes just to see it. I cannot approach that door, whose entrance I hover by each night. Call me crazed by my own genius, I am not so blind that I do not see their truth.

Yet am I not mortal, and doomed to fail as mortals do? Am I not privileged to my own cravings and carnal desires – my personal vices and traps before I cross the many infernos?

My guess lies at much past midnight, for the moon hid in fear hours ago. Once upon a time I might have compared the orb to her eyes, but she is above lunar cowardice. Hateful torrents of rain assault this remote and despicable village. To fools, a beacon of peace. To me, a symbol of never-ending betrayal. The raging rain threatens to wash it all away – already my hindpaws are covered in squelching mud and regret. Take it! Erase it! Let these fools learn to swim! When that fearful solar queen appears again I will not care.

Her abode is in the center of this betrayal, and the apocalypse is so deafening that all is silent. I could scream to the heavens through their acid clouds until blood runs down my throat, past my horrid skin, through my thoracic vertebrae staining everything the ugliest red and still none would hear the pained whisper of my soul. The barricade between the death outside and the beacon inside means naught to me, for a well-placed kick opens the useless wood instantly, and I stroll inside leisurely. Let the door stay open – it will serve me. Standing by the hearth I carelessly shake out my coat and pat the hopeful lumps in its pockets – still dry and yearning. I walk down the hallway, thunder roaring after me – step by step I leave dripping evidence, the path to my resurrection clear to all but seen by none. It is dark, blissfully dark, a perfect covering for the perfect act. I have never needed light, despite my wants, and I most certainly do not now.

At her door I stop to shiver, emotions twisting my face and digits. I need to pause to recompose my malicious well-wishes, and I rub the material inside my pocket. Firm, firm enough, friends for unlife. Not yet, friend! I trail my claws over the knob and finally twist it faultlessly, with ease of practice and anticipation. The door creaks but she wakes not and I feel a thrill throughout my corpse to see her lying there, alive, mine. Silently I tread closer, all evil breath held from me without my knowledge and by my sick joy. I frown. Her eyes are closed. I must see –

My cold paws align and snap together into place at her throat. Heavens! Her eyes fly open! I gaze into them lovingly - her seasons away from home gave her strength, but nothing can rival the adrenaline of madness - and the light slowly, gradually, horribly fades. For moments, the sands are frozen within their vials. Under the tips of my claws the pallor beneath her fur is a pure icy blue – her eyes! The loveliest colour, slippery and glassy beneath her lashes, I could stand motionless for counted infinity and stare at it. This thought wakens me from my reverie - the paradox is clear to me, for I must hurry before the warmth leaves her, too.

I remove the decent bottle of liquid delirium from my pocket and remove the top, pouring a large portion over her glistening still form. A round about the room of my most extended dreams and before the door I will once again hover by. I look heavenward – the beams supporting more than mere wood are firm and sturdy. My friends gathered about me – a stool beneath me and a rope above me. Before I greet the evils I grate a piece of flint and the fire burns as it leaves my paw. Death is swallowed in victory! Abruptly - an explosion of senses and actions fly before me. Are they real? Is the luminescence only within my now quiet mind? I must be an ethereal spirit, floating away from my own atrocious tools, to witness the scene of my own death. The red is spreading, growing, and I detachedly hear the roaring of more than flames – the roar of heartbreak, of worlds shattering, the bedroom door open where I had left it closed. A phantom framed by the doorway, lit with beautiful red rage, and my world vanishes.


End file.
